Plainfield right hander Gavin Lykins cuts an imposing figure on the pitcher’s mound.
Standing 6-foot-5, 212 pounds, Lykins has prototypical size for a starting pitcher, and his electric stuff has put him on Major League Baseball scout’s radars.
During a late-April start against Decatur Central, Lykins’ devastating repertoire of pitches was on full display. He worked out of a first-inning jam by freezing consecutive batters with fastballs on the outer half of the plate. His third consecutive strikeout came on a swinging strike on a fastball over the plate. After issuing a walk, Lykins froze the next batter with a breaking ball and elevated a fastball for a swinging strike and his fifth strikeout over two innings.
Lykins finished the start allowing one earned run on three hits and three walks, striking out six and hitting one batter with a pitch. When Lykins has command of his pitches, few batters can connect with his three-pitch mix, but the senior’s biggest battle is often with himself and harnessing the talent contained in his right arm.
“I just need to stay composed, maybe not try to pitch for strikeouts, but pitch to contact. Trust my defense,” Lykins said. “(Throw) a first-pitch strike. I know that could determine a whole at bat and just commanding all my pitches. I know I have it. I just gotta find it. Stay composed. Keep my mechanics the same. I know sometimes I’ll accidentally forget to do something with my mechanics or my delivery; that can mess everything up.”
Lykins is in his fourth year on the Quakers’ varsity team, but he’s still relatively new to pitching. Lykins always liked playing baseball as a youth, but his parents thought he would be a football player. He did some pitching with his travel ball team, but he was mostly a first baseman or catcher. It was not until the eighth grade that Lykins even considered making the switch the pitching full time.
Lykins and the ZT Elite Midwest travel team reached the championship game of a tournament at Grand Park in Westfield. Lykins drew the start and pitched well, catching the eye of Prep Baseball Indiana scouting director Cooper Trinkle.
“That’s when Cooper pulled us to the side and was like, ‘I know you guys may not realize it, but you have a pitcher on your hands, not a first baseman,'” Lykins’ mother, Tabatha said. “And we were like, ‘No, no, he’s a first baseman.’ And Cooper was like, ‘No, he’s a pitcher.'”
The words of encouragement from Trinkle spurned the family into pursuing pitching lessons for their son. They soon connected with Derek DeVaughan, a former college pitcher at Florida and draft pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, who is currently a pitching coach at Mooresville. Heading into ninth grade, Lykins was already standing 6-feet tall. Syncing up a long-levered growing body takes hours upon hours of repetition to master the technique and strength building to increase velocity.
“The initial steps were more just getting balanced and under control with his body,” DeVaughan said. “Once we developed a good, strong base, we went into a lot of rotational power output work, along with arm care work. A lot of arm care and strengthening programs that he followed along seemed to really be what he was needing at the time.
“(Control) is definitely the hardest part, because he has a great arm and with any velocity increase comes a little bit of change each time. Every couple mile an hour you may get things a little bit different with your arm action or control but the thing for him was just being able to repeat his delivery. So that’s the thing that he’s worked on the most this off season, now that he has the velocity, just being able to repeat his delivery, keeping it simple and repeatable.”
When Lykins began working with DeVaughan he threw about 85 miles per hour. Over the years, he steadily grew and added strength to his frame, increasing his pitching velocity a few miles per hour each year. In March, Lykins’ fastball reached 96.2 mph, a number exceeding the average MLB fastball by two miles per hour.
Baseball America named Lykins as one of its 50 MLB Draft sleepers ahead of July’s 2026 MLB Draft. Lykins is just one of several talented draft-eligible players from Central Indiana. The magazine ranked Lykins as the ninth-best draft prospect in Indiana behind top prospect Mooresville pitcher Hudson DeVaughan (No. 1), Derek’s son, Center Grove pitcher Gannon Grant (No. 2), Guerin Catholic pitcher Tate Troxell (No. 4), and Shelbyville pitcher Aiden Smith (No. 6).
Five starts into his senior season, Lykins is 2-1 with a 4.36 ERA on 10 hits and 14 walks to go along with 30 strikeouts over 17⅔ innings.
Before Lykins’ fastball was opening the eyes of scouts, it caught the attention of South Florida University. Plainfield coach Steve Mirizzi played for current USF coach Mitch Hannahs at Lincoln Trail College in Robinson, Ill. USF assistant coach/recruiting coordinator watched Lykins touch 95 on the radar gun in a start against Martinsville last season. The interest from USF came immediately after that game. Soon, Lykins was making a trip to Tampa and immediately fell in love with the campus and baseball program.
“He loved the environment there,” Tabatha said. “He’s a big fan of not pitching in cold weather, so he’s really excited that he won’t have to pitch in cold weather anymore, and it was just the right fit. You could feel it. We all could feel it, that it was just a good fit for him.”
Lykins knows he still has a lot of development left to do as a pitcher. His stuff attracts attention, but he is focusing on honing his craft and performing the best he can for his team. He admits that he sees the scouts with their radar guns planted behind home plate, but he never lets additional eyes distract him from what he’s trying to accomplish on the mound.
“I just gotta stay locked in,” Lykins said. “Pitch and catch with my catcher, just throwing with him. It’s another day. (Scouts) are just fans. I see them as fans. Just go, walk out (on the mound) and go at it.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Plainfield flamethrower Gavin Lykins working to harness potential, gets MLB interest
Reporting by Akeem Glaspie, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
